


Disintegration: Persistence

by Prismatic Bell (Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Canon Queer Character, Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Existential Weirdness, F/M, I don't even know how to tag this story, I'm honestly at a loss, I'm not even sure it has a genre, If you have tag suggestions please share them, M/M, Other, POCecil, as in it looks nothing like anything I've found in the fandom before, at episode 40 if you were wondering
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-10 19:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor/pseuds/Prismatic%20Bell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos just wanted to ask a question.</p><p>He wasn't expecting an answer like this.</p><p>Or: A look at the life and times of Cecil Palmer, Night Vale resident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HOOBOY where should I start? So, first off, this is a triple-split fic--it takes place partly in the 1940s, partly in Night Vale's 2012, and partly in Night Vale's 2015/everybody else's 2188, and it's written in sections so you're going to be bouncing around between years. I try hard not to romanticize historical eras when they end up in my writing, which means you're going to run into some very uncomfortable stuff--racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, backbitey stereotypey nasty stuff--and some of it is going to be coming out of the mouths of characters you really like, including Cecil. There's a reason for this and all I can say is, "If it doesn't make sense by about halfway through Chapter Three I've failed, miserably." I promise I did not just hijack a bunch of characters and turn them into assholes for no reason (and also that they don't stay that way--sections written during the course of the show's canon are going to be, hopefully, indistinguishable from the canon personalities you know), and if you'll stick with me for a couple of chapters I think you'll enjoy the ride. We begin long, long, _long_ before the events of canon, and the characters have a lot of developing to do.
> 
> Next up: It is extremely important to this fic that Cecil is not white (see above: starting during WWII). In this incarnation he is Navajo both by race and by religion and was adopted by a Jewish family.
> 
> Followed by: The title of this one is actually pretty damned important. It's taken from one of my two favorite Salvador Dalí paintings, _The Disintegration of The Persistence of Memory_ , and is a redux of his famous 1931 piece _The Persistence of Memory_. (Interestingly enough, Cecil in this fic would have been 15 in 1931--an age I'm sure has some meaning to you, if you're here--and I didn't actually plan that.) When I first joined Night Vale fandom, I thought of these two paintings and in my mind, "the sand wastes" look very much like the original painting. Although interpretations of _Disintegration_ vary, the most common is that it's Dalí's interpretation of the world post-nuclear bomb. If you're not sure you've ever seen them, you should go pop onto Google and look 'em up.
> 
> Furthermore: "Where the hell is Cielo Oro?" It's Night Vale, back when Night Vale was part of a little line of mining and manufacturing towns. There's a nice creepy story behind the name change. It's in the fic. Not the first chapter, but we'll get there.
> 
> Finally (I think): I actually started working on this about 6-8 weeks before Episode 40 came out. (You can imagine my freakout when I listened to it.) I didn't actually expect canon events to take this turn, which is why this has to be posted now. That means new chapters might be a bit slow going up. They WILL go up--just give me a bit of time.

NIGHT VALE: JUNE 2015

Curiosity killed the cat.

Carlos isn’t sure where the arcane little saying came from. Cecil could probably tell him, or at least tell him what Night Vale’s version of where it came from is, but right now . . . 

. . . right now . . . 

Curiosity killed the cat.

He’s hoping curiosity won’t kill the Carlos. But he has to know.

And so he opens doors and lets them slam shut, haphazardly scanning the ID badge Cecil provided him, until he’s standing outside the door to the recording booth, looking in.

Impossible.

Even in Night Vale, _impossible_.

 _Curiosity killed the cat,_ Carlos’ mother says in his head. _But satisfaction brought him back,_ his father rebuts, and if there is one thing Carlos can count on it’s that in a place like Night Vale, satisfaction might do exactly that.

And so he pushes open the door to the booth.

Cecil grins widely over his shoulder and then goes back to the mic. Carlos feels a bucket of ice cascade into his stomach.

_Why did I do this here? In god’s name, why?_

But it’s a moot question, because now Cecil is taking off his headphones and turning around, the weather gone live and--Carlos looks at Cecil’s board--a prerecorded segment of some kind to follow, and so he closes his eyes and opens them and opens the folder in his left hand.

“I was at City Hall today,” he says, and there sits Cecil with that politely interested look on his face, that look that says there’s nothing of note at City Hall but this is his lover speaking, and Carlos feels his stomach lurch. Because it can’t be true. It _can’t_ be. “Picking up paperwork.”

“Oh?” Cecil scratches his wrist absently and brushes his braid impatiently over his shoulder. “You didn’t happen to get a new Construction 2198-B, did you? Because I really want to see about fixing that--”

“I was getting this.” 

And he tosses half the contents of the folder into Cecil’s lap: one sheet of paper with fancy calligraphy and an embossed seal. Cecil’s neutral smile drops into an O of shock and dismay.

“That’s one hell of an error, Cecil,” Carlos says, and then he takes the second paper from the folder--not so fancy, but still with a seal, this one with a holographic barcode printed overtop--and lays it overtop of the first. “In Night Vale years, my birth year should be 1979, instead of 2153, with a two-year margin of error for canceled days and the like. I did the math. That doesn’t surprise me, I already know Night Vale years are longer.”

Cecil is studying the paper with the holographic barcode. His fingers are shaking. Carlos plucks it out of his hands so he can’t lay it back atop the one still in his lap.

“But you’re ten years younger than me, Cecil, so is there some reason your birth certificate says December 1917?”

Cecil shakes his head in dismay. “Carlos, forget it.”

“It’s right there in black and white, Cecil--”

“Please, just forget it,” Cecil pleads, and he reaches up to put his hands on Carlos’ shoulders--the fronts of them, at least. “Don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Don’t--Cecil, this says you should be _ninety-seven years old_ , and I want to know why. I know time doesn’t work here the way it does outside--”

“I know,” Cecil cuts in, and Carlos grabs Cecil’s fingers before they can undo his tie. “Please. Just forget about it, don’t tell anybody you saw it--”

“So it’s not just some kind of error,” Carlos says. “Cecil, I came here for _answers_. Not to have people tell me what I should and shouldn’t look into. I get enough of that from City Council and the secret police. I don't have to listen to it from you too, do I?"

Cecil sighs. It’s a sad sound, a hurt sound, and Carlos almost wants to back off just to keep from having to hear it again.

Almost.

“You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?”

Carlos shakes his head. Cecil’s shoulders slump, and he lets his hands fall from Carlos’ chest.

“Turn around,” he says at last. “That’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

Carlos decides not to argue the point; when Cecil makes one of his arcane pronouncements, there’s really nothing to do but listen and then demand to know what kind of enlightenment the instructions were supposed to bring. So he turns around--

\--and looks out the back of a shattered booth, across a few scattered cinderblock remains that might once have been walls. There’s a solid wooden table sunbleached to white in the area Carlos’ mental map tells him should be the breakroom; where Station Management should be are the ruins of walls, surrounding a floor heaped and drifted with sand and covered in filthy, creeping vines. Somewhere, water drips. These are the ruins Carlos would expect in what was once the Baja Desert, not Night Vale's own weird microclimate. Carlos turns back toward the antiquated control panel.

“Cecil, what--”

The metal wheelrims and framework of his chair are still there, but the only voice speaking from them is the wind through the spokes. On another sunbleached, rain-splintered desk that bears no resemblance to Cecil’s sleek workstation sits a machine Carlos’ History of Electronics professor once called a _reel-to-reel_ , loaded up with--ah, well, the name makes more sense, now--a reel of—yes, of course—tape.

The reel is marked old-style: August 1, 1945.

There’s no electrical outlet he can see, but he has the feeling if he pushes play—

A tune he doesn’t know crackles from the machine, and he’s not surprised in the least at how smoothly the wheels turn, like this whole setup has been waiting since—

Since when?

“That was ‘In The Mood’ by the Glenn Miller Band,” Cecil’s voice—a more relaxed Cecil, a smiling Cecil—says from the tape, and Carlos almost screams in shock. “I don’t know about you, listeners, but I’m certainly in the mood, the mood for music, that is. In the news, President Truman has announced that the United States has developed a weapon that will end the stalemate against the Japanese should Emperor Hirohito refuse to surrender. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m certainly ready for an end to this war. And now, the President’s speech.”

There’s a click--some relay Cecil turned over in the long-distant past. _Which war was that?_ Carlos wonders. Not the Trans-American War; that was a good century after the date on the tape, and he doesn’t remember the Japanese being part of it, or America having ever been at war with Japan, actually. Truman, though, that name--

Weapons development. The Manhattan Project. World War Two. Of course.

There’s another click. The chime of music, and Carlos feels a chill down his spine: this isn’t a broadcast that was ever actually intended to be heard by public ears, he thinks, although he’s not sure why he feels that way. And then Cecil’s voice, somehow automated and terrible: “Thirty-seven, five, one-thirteen, twenty-nine, six-ninety-one, five-zero-three, sixty-seven--dear god, what _is_ that?”

A loud roar.

A hum.

Silence.

\-----------------------

CIELO ORO: FEBRUARY 1943

"Not dancing?"

Cecil leans against the wall and shakes his head. Steve leans up against him, and Cecil offers him a thin smile.

"Look who's talking."

"My girl went to the comfort station," Steve answers, and offers Cecil a cigarette he takes gratefully. Anything to do with his hands. He passes over his match once he's finished with it, and Cecil lights up. "Looks to me like yours isn't here at all." 

"Looks to me like I haven't got one," Cecil says, and takes a drag to avoid saying more. Steve is having none of it.

"Helen?"

"Mm."

"Cecil," Steve says, and then he lowers his voice below the music. "You've got to get it together, Cecil. People talk."

"People always talk. I'm supposed to care?"

"If those Army eagles hanging around that new project hear about it, you could be in a real mess of trouble." Steve waves a hand in front of Cecil's face. "The kind of trouble that lands you in a padded cell, Cecil, I'm serious."

"I think the Army has a few bigger problems than a little Injun queerboy right now."

"Shh!" Steve slams a finger over Cecil's lips, narrowly avoiding the fag between them. "What am I gonna do with you, Cecil?"

Cecil pulls the smoke out of his mouth. It's not that great anyway--tobacco rations are a nice little pocket of hell.

"Gamble, smoke, be the All-American despair of Nosy Josie and the Temperance Committee," Cecil suggests, and Steve stifles a laugh into his elbow.

"Don't let her hear that," Steve hisses. Cecil shrugs, takes another drag off his smoke.

"She thinks I'm hellbound anyway," Cecil comments, lets the smoke drift out of his mouth. "I don't really give a damn."

"You keep saying things like that, you're going to get picked up as a communist."

"That'd be an interesting case," Cecil says. "The communist who was absolutely no threat to the Great White Father because—what was it?—oh, yeah. 'Might be a redskin but I just look too much like a nigger.' That's what the fellow at the voting registry office over in Desert Bluffs said. How do you suppose they'd go about trying to prosecute that? Or would they just lynch me and save the state the trouble?"

"The ne'er-do-well attitude really doesn't suit you, Cecil."

"Well, once the war's over and they let me leave town, you won't have to worry about it," Cecil answers. "I'm thinking I'll tell everyone I had a vision how I'm supposed to live a life of solitude in the desert. Get out of here."

"What, and miss hearing Buck Rogers every week?" Steve teases, and Cecil grins in spite of himself. He hates Buck Rogers and its whacky science.

“Life without radio. How could I _ever_ stand it?” Cecil asks, and stretches his arms over his head before taking one last drag off the fag and crushing it out. Cornshucks would be better, and that, he thinks, is really saying something.

“Well, if you decide you’re going to go be a desert hermit, you’ll excuse Eleanor and me if we still drop in from time to time,” Steve says, and nudges Cecil’s side with his elbow. Cecil elbows back.

“And then they’ll pick you up as communists. Hanging out with a dirty Navajo who keeps trying to vote. Gonna come to a bad end sure's you're born, Steven Carlsberg, a bad end," Cecil says, and Steve clamps down on laughter so hard he chokes.

"Oh my god, Cecil, you sound just like her," Steve gasps. "Don't _do_ that!" 

Cecil looks up and then inclines his head. "Evening, Mrs. Masters."

Steve whips off his cap. "Ma'am," he says. Josette Masters--Nosy Josie, to those who don't disapprove of a drink after hard work--sniffs at Cecil and turns her gaze pointedly on the beer in Steve's hand. Cecil steps on Steve's foot.

"Awful sorry to hear about your old man's trouble, Mrs. Masters," Cecil says, all wide earnest eyes and little-boy fidgeting, and she frowns at him. "Not that I listen to gossip like some folks--" and he grinds his heel into Steve's toes to bring him straight faced again--"but I was in at the barber last Saturday, and--"

"You've not cut a hair off your head since birth," she sniffs. "Don't lie."

"No, ma'am, never would," he says, still with that butter-wouldn't-melt expression. If he's going to be the town scapegoat--and there's no escaping that, Mexicans are tolerated in Cielo Oro but Cecil's week isn't over until somebody's told him to go back to the reservation at least once--he can at least be a flea in the process, swattable but oh, so irritating first. "Both those things are against my religion. It's just Doc Williams won't take my money even though it's silver straight out the grocer's till, and I took a real nasty turn after that machine backfire at the laundry, getting Mister Leroy out the mangler. Telly stitched it right on up, though," he says, and displays the neat line of black thread across his palm. "And, well, seeing as there's no good anaesthetic in town these days, I was trying to pay attention to anything else in there, and that's how I heard."

Josie Masters sniffs again and turns back to Steve. "And what are you doing in this company, Mr. Carlsberg?" she asks. Steve, to his credit, reddens but doesn’t mumble.

“Just waiting for Eleanor, ma’am,” he says, and claps a hand on Cecil’s shoulder. “Haven’t seen Cecil since he moved up to foreman--”

“ _Foreman,_ ” she hisses, like it's a dirty word. Steve nods.

"Yes, ma'am," he agrees. "I thought it merited some congratulations."

Josie sniffs. "I know most of our _good_ men are away," she says, and Steve reddens again. "But in the rest of the country, they've had the sense to employ _women_."

Cecil studies his fingernails. "In the rest of the country, they don't have military in to keep proper order," he says, and Josie's face quivers with rage.

Then Cecil's facing in another direction, and his cheek feels hot. He can taste a drop of blood where the tiny diamond chips in Josie's wedding band cut his lip, and he chuckles as she stalks away.

"I'll make real sure I get your mister home safe if he has any more trouble, Missus Masters," Cecil calls loudly. Steve gives him a despairing look. Then he checks to see Josie's gone and turns back to Cecil.

"What kind of trouble was Amos into?" he asks, and Cecil stretches his legs in front of him, shoves his hands in his pockets.

"You know Desert Bluffs went completely dry?" he asks. "Because it's a company town and they worry about the Mexicans?"

"Ayup," Steve agrees, and glances sideways at him. Cecil raises an eyebrow in Josie's direction.

"Sheriff said how Amos Masters got picked up peddling corn liquor out the back of his Ford," he says. "Out back of the church. And they found him because there the damned fool was, singing 'It's De-Lovely' at the top of his lungs and _covered_ in his own damned liquor where he was too drunk to get his mouth properly." He raises his beer in a mock toast. "Temperance starts at home, ladies, remember that."

Steve does his best not to howl laughter. He's mostly successful. Cecil grins, then grins wider when someone takes his arm.

"Why, Missus Carlsberg," he says. "Right out in public. It's a miracle your husband doesn't catch us out."

Steve and Eleanor both laugh. The smile on her face, Cecil thinks, goes oddly with her serious tone.

"I think you want to ask me to dance," she says, quietly, and then laughs like he's made the kind of joke friends do. "With the stories Helen's telling anyone in the powder room who wants to listen." 

"Lies and gross exaggerations," Cecil announces, and takes a deep bow. "It'd be my pleasure, Eleanor."

They go out to the dance floor. It's a slower song, one really better suited to couples than friends, and Cecil wonders for a single moment if he should bow out. Then Eleanor leans up like she plans to kiss his cheek, and whispers in the general direction of his ear.

"One of the women in there was an officer's wife," she murmurs. "You have got to do something, Cecil, we can’t protect you forever.”

“You don’t need to protect me,” he says, and thinks--like he always does when he says it--of a body hanging from a lightpost, skin black and bloated and shiny, feathers braided carefully into the hair broken and bedraggled, his mother’s hand on his shoulder, turning his face into her hip as he let out a shriek loud enough to send cats hissing down alleyways.

John Palmer was only six years older than Cecil is now when his body was brought home.

Cecil is very aware that attempts to protect him--even ones made by a white man--are ill-advised and foolish.

"Then what are you going to do?"

He looks out over a dance floor filled with happy Valentine's Day couples, past all of them to Helen chatting with a man in an army uniform, and shakes his head.

"I don't know."

\------------------------

NIGHT VALE: JUNE 2012

Carlos isn't used to small towns.

Buffalo isn't New York, of course, but It's big enough to get lost in. Night Vale is big enough to have its own airport--for a given value of "airport" that includes "decommissioned military base and five flights a day, four of them refuel stops"--but while not everybody knows everybody, everyone seems to have no more than two degrees of separation. 

And so he shakes hands and smiles and tries to form a relationship network in his head, since he can't put it on a screen: husbands and partners and cousins and friends and colleagues, all eager to know what brings a scientist to their little town. There's also an extremely pretty girl of perhaps sixteen who introduces herself as Ellie Carlsberg, says she writes for the Night Vale High Outlook (school paper or school magazine, Carlos isn't sure which), and asks if he's met Cecil.

"We haven't really been introduced, but I've heard him," he answers, trying for both cautious and noncommittal. Ellie laughs. Carlos would bet cash money she has a lucky fellow stashed somewhere. Like the football team. 

"My dad says Cecil's big problem is a party line between his brain and his tongue," Ellie says. Carlos smiles and tries not to show his confusion: _what's a party line?_ "He's harmless. Well-- _that_ way," she adds, and nods across the room. "He's the one with the long hair in the purple T-shirt, you can't miss him."

Carlos looks in the direction of her nod. In months to come he'll think he set himself back by weeks, at least, with the next words out of his mouth, but when he says them his work is the furthest thing from his mind:

"The one in the wheelchair?"

The pause is long enough to tell him he's violated some serious rule of etiquette. At last Ellie says yes, but her smile dims. Carlos suggests he should go say hello, and she nods. Then she grabs his sleeve before he can go.

"If you're smart, you won't say that to Cecil," she says. "The chair is like Fight Club. The first rule about it is you don't talk about it."

Carlos doesn't ask what Fight Club is. Instead he shakes his head. "Sorry. It just--startled me. I didn't know they made chairs for non-hospital use anymore."

"Not everybody can use prosthetics, you know," she says. Carlos doesn't bother pointing out that the newest generation of exo tech has a rejection rate of only .002%, so low there are people who choose to get injured limbs amputated and replaced. Instead he nods and works his way across the room, listens for a minute as Cecil holds an animated argument with the mayor and a masked man holding a vocoder. Without a microphone in front of him, Cecil grows a faint accent that tips his vowels into an almost East Coast sound, broad a's and dipthonged o's. His hands flutter, illustrating his point like startled birds, and when he finally lets them fall to the arms of the chair Carlos steps up, wondering if it's horribly rude of him to stand upright and if he shouldn't get to one knee, instead. The two arguing with Cecil are both sitting--no help there. Cecil tilts his head up and grins broadly.

"Carlos!" he enthuses, holding up a hand to shake. "Night Vale's newest biographer, chasing her mysteries into the void or wheresoever they may lead. Did you find any materials at the station?"

Right--he did a speed-run of the station, half-convinced he was going to develop radiation sores right where he stood. It occurs to him that he didn't notice the chair then, and he ignores the thought for now.

"Quite a few," he answers, and Cecil beams. "Forgive me if this is rude, but has your doctor ever commented that you have extremely low bone density? Or anemia?"

"Have I?" Cecil looks fascinated, and for a moment Carlos wonders if maybe the off-the-charts radiation in the studio could also cause brain damage. "I suppose I should go see Teddy, I haven't gone since the tentacle outbreak a couple of years ago. It's probably the fluoride in the water. Oh!" One of his hands flickers out of sight, and then back in again, holding a little square of stiff paper. "I meant to give this to you earlier, but you were gone so quickly. My home number is on the back," he adds, and Carlos looks down, bemused, at the square. It's an honest to god business card, the kind Carlos has seen in the Smithsonian's American History museum: Cecil Palmer, Night Vale Community Radio, Reporting Broadcaster, work and "cellular" numbers. He wonders about it for a second--the same second during which he almost offers the chip in his wrist for Cecil to scan, only to realize Cecil doesn't seem to have a holophone--and then he reminds himself that Night Vale and its sister city are in the middle of so much nowhere on a stretch of the New 1 that calls itself Route 800, a stretch that travelers report finding themselves on only to be unable to locate it again on the way back, and that if he's right--if this weird little town is what he thinks it is--obsolete tech will be part of his research, and soon.

"Thank you," he says instead, and Cecil smiles, even white teeth in an uneven brown face. At some point in his life, Cecil's had a broken cheekbone--possibly the same incident that put him in thick glasses and the incongruous wheelchair, Carlos thinks.

"Call me anytime, I can help you get situated," Cecil offers. "Or just chat. New places can be unpleasant when you're this far from home."

Carlos prides himself on having not actually jumped. "How do you know how far from home I am?"

"Your accent," Cecil tells him. "I had a friend in the Marines who was from Vermont and he sounded just like you." Cecil claps his hands together, once, like a schoolteacher. "It _has_ been a pleasure, Carlos, but I have to get up to the station. The PR department left me a whole stack of new ad copy that has to be recorded soonest. I love the way they put that. 'Soonest,' like we don't all know City Council has to approve any copy being aired in Night Vale and it doesn't really matter how soon it's recorded since it can't air until the scripts are signed off on, but it keeps them happy. Sheriff, Mayor Winchell--" And Cecil nods to each of them in turn before rolling out.

It's not until that night in bed that Carlos can put a finger on what bothers him so much. _I had a friend in the Marines who was from Vermont,_ Cecil said, but Vermont is a province--has been since the 2090s, when they refused to rejoin the United States after the People's Republic split off down south.

Of course, there are still Canadian soldiers stationed at the border, and Cecil might have served at a northern base, or even in one of the trans-American units that defended Texas when the last Mexican president tried to claim it as part of Mexico a few months before his assassination. Maybe he even immigrated to the States.

Which doesn't change what his gut feels, Carlos thinks. And in his gut, he's sure that Cecil--sweet Cecil, harmless-well-that-way Cecil with his blue eyes and his long-ago broken face and his large and guileless smile--is lying. Not about the Marines, and maybe not even about the friend; but he is lying.

Carlos wishes he knew why.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much. Discussion of illness and death, although not much.

NIGHT VALE: JUNE 2015

"Does that answer your question, Carlos?" Cecil's voice says, and this time Carlos does scream, spins and sees Cecil sitting in his chair, the building still a scattered ruin but the chair apparently new and whole. "That's what an A-bomb sounds like, if you were wondering. They haven't dropped one since the Third World War, and never will again until some idiot in charge forgets why the entire world disarmed after Korea and decides to build another, but there's one thing you can say for nuclear power, it sure makes people sit up and pay attention." Cecil raises his eyes to Carlos' face. "That's how Night Vale's chanting won what you call World War Two, you know. We made people forget we ever existed, and nobody ever had to know that in 1945 the United States of America tested its newest weapon against a town full of refugee scientists who helped build it."

Carlos' mouth is dry. He tries to swallow. "Then you, you're, that is--" He swallows again, unsurprised to find he can't finish. Cecil pulls a water bottle out of the pouch on his chair and tosses it lightly. Carlos catches it with nimble fingers even as his brain reels, takes a drink while thought is still numb.

"I'm not dead, if that's where you were going," Cecil comments. He sounds like he's trying to be reassuring. "I almost died. I looked right at the fireball, you know. They say it'll blind you. But somebody chanted, somebody said the right words at just the right time, and--" Cecil shrugs and sighs. Carlos can hear the centuries in that sigh. "I was hoping you'd find a way to reverse it before you found out about me. I'm not the least bit sorry I met you, even if it did take two hundred years, but I'm ready to get old, Carlos, I'm ready for whatever happens after 26 years old." His eyes--incongruous and blue, and Carlos thinks of Cecil saying he looked at the fireball and he shudders--fill with tears. "I was hoping I'd get to do it with you." 

Cecil swallows hard, closes his eyes and collects himself. Carlos can see him do it. And then suddenly somehow between blinks they're back in the radio station, wooden floor laid over rough concrete and the glass in the booth sparkling and clean. Cecil takes a deep breath.

"They won't let you stay," Cecil whispers. "Not now that you know. They worry about people in town being reminded. A few years ago--well, more than a few on your time scale, this would have been about the time the what did they call it, the war where a big chunk of the Deep South went even more radical than it was already and seceded again and started calling itself the Republic or something--"

"First People's Republic of America," Carlos answers, automatically, halfway through the water bottle and his mouth still dry. The secession was more than a century before he was born. "The Trans-American War."

"That's the one," Cecil agrees. "It was the last outside event I reported on, and about half a dozen people hit a critical events horizon where they couldn't take in any new information, it was just too much, and they went crazy. They thought it was just another arm of the war with Germany and the South was going to fall to Hitler, or already fell to Hitler. One of them committed suicide, and as far as we can tell, your death can't be reversed if it's by your own hand. Nobody knows why. The scientists who lived here--live here--were mostly engineers and nuclear physicists. Your branch of science didn't exist then."

"That's why there's a ban on pens," Carlos says, mouth still dry, body still numb. Cecil nods.

"So people couldn't track dates," he agrees. "And clocks don't work because of the Pulse and because we're essentially in limbo. You have no idea how I felt when you told me you knew about the clocks, Carlos, I was so damned happy I thought I'd melt." Cecil sobers. "And then you got distracted. And I thought that'd be the end of it, and I just let taking my birth certificate . . . fall off my radar. As they say." 

"So you were lying," Carlos whispers. Feeling is starting to filter back, and they're not feelings he likes. "When I was introduced to you, I had the feeling you were lying, and I was right. I've spent two years thinking I just had the creeps that first day, and the whole time you were lying about everything."

Cecil looks wounded. "No. I gave you the same information as everyone else in town. I've never lied to you, Carlos, I've gone crazy wondering how to tell you the whole truth about how I lost my legs without getting you in trouble and I've argued like you wouldn't believe with City Council about whether or not you count as a family member under the need-to-know clause in my contract, I was ready to challenge the entire group of them over the way 'domestic partner' is defined just because it was written in your 1950s--"

"Or maybe you were just the distraction," Carlos interrupts. There's a bitter ball of anger in his stomach. "Is the falling in love bit something you do with every scientist who comes to town, or was I just lucky that way?"

Cecil winces, and Carlos sees something that would amaze him if he weren't trying so hard to stay angry: tears, running quietly down Cecil's face. In three years, he's been a party to Cecil really crying only twice--once when Carlos nearly died that first year, and once in the middle of the night, when Carlos got out of bed to find Cecil sitting at the kitchen table, crying in that same weird quiet way into a cup of tea. Carlos remembers pressing, that second time, refusing to accept Cecil's assurances that there was no reason for his tears, and finally Cecil shaking his head and shrugging: _I'm just sad tonight, that's all. It happens sometimes. It's better to cry and get it done with than to let it eat you inside. That's what I think, anyway._

Cecil doesn't just cry, and now, watching those two tears slide down his face, Carlos is willing to believe he wasn't "just sad" that night at something reasonably approximate to two in the morning, either. Carlos takes a deep breath.

"Okay," he says at last. "All right. Low blow. I'm sorry."

Cecil shakes his head, sniffles and wipes his eyes. "You wouldn't know," he says, and pulls another water bottle out of his chair to sip. "The last man I dated, your great-grandparents weren't born yet. You weren't here."

"That's persuasive," Carlos comments, and Cecil laughs like he's doing it in spite of himself. Then he reaches for Carlos' hand. Carlos forces himself not to pull away. Cecil's hand is warm and a little damp and pliant, folding around Carlos' fingers like they were made to fit together, and impossible truths or not, Carlos is comforted. Cecil may be two centuries old, he may be alive only because of a dimensional shear, but his hand is the same as always and, as always, feels like a piece Carlos didn't know he was missing until he had it. Cecil squeezes, and Carlos squeezes back. Cecil looks down into his lap.

"We have to get you out of here," he says, and Carlos sees tears caught in his lashes again. "They'll be coming for you."

"They can't make me leave," Carlos says, although he has the terrible, sinking feeling that's not true. Cecil shakes his head quickly, almost frantically.

"Carlos," he answers. "My sweet Carlos. Please don't." And then, before Carlos can argue, Cecil puts his other hand on top of the pair they have already joined, catches Carlos' hand between his fingers. "You don't want to know what they'll do if you try to stay."

\----------------------

DESERT BLUFFS: MARCH 1943

"Your mother died young," the examiner comments. Cecil grits his teeth.

"Yes."

"Natural causes?"

"Not being white enough," Cecil answers. "Runs in the family."

"Indian sickness?"

"Well, let me tell you, she and my brother both got sick with fever and couldn't keep down food or water, so I found the dish she kept her money in and went to Doc Williams and told him I had twenty dollars right up and if a call and medicine went any more than that I'd work it off nights after school, twenty-five cents an hour, any work he needed done, right up to the last cent we owed if he'd help my ma. And four days later I used the twenty dollars to bury her with because the asshole told me he'd take a wooden nickel before an Indian's promise because the wooden nickel might be good for something."

The examiner doesn't say anything. Cecil wonders if the next question's going to be some bullshit about a medicine man he must know Cecil had no way to get to, and reminds himself beating a federal employee could land him in prison. At last the examiner taps his pen against the paper.

"Your father died young, also."

"Yes."

"You didn't check off a cause."

"You didn't list lynching."

"You seem to have some very extreme attitudes about Anglos, Mister Palmer."

"Oh, not at all," Cecil answers. "I have _lots_ of white friends."

The examiner goes silent again. Finally he leaves the room. Cecil stays; he knows when he hasn't been dismissed.

The men who come in look a lot higher on the food chain than the first examiner, and there are two of them. One flips through a folder; one stands by the door.

"Why are you here, Mister Palmer?"

"Because I got a draft letter."

"The lieutenant who reported back on you from Cielo Oro suggested you'd ignore it."

"The lieutenant who snooped on my life in Cielo Oro probably doesn't know I just got promoted to foreman in January," Cecil answers. "I'm not going to lose a dollar an hour just to make a point."

"Indeed." The one with the folder flicks some papers. "How many languages do you speak, Mister Palmer?"

"Fluently?"

"Fluently. And with any proficiency, if there are others."

"Three. I can get by in Russian and I can get in a lot of trouble in Hebrew and Yiddish."

"What is your stated religion?"

"I'm Navajo."

"I'm aware of your ethnicity, Mister Palmer, I wish to know your religious affiliation."

"I'm _Navajo_ ," he repeats. The man on the door says something Cecil doesn't catch. The man with the folder sighs. 

"Where did you learn Hebrew?"

"My friend Steve's family. It's not true what they say about the Jews, you know. The Carlsbergs took me in when my mother was killed and didn't ask a single thing in return. And I wasn't surviving on table scraps, either." 

"And Russian?"

"Crazy man who lived next door to the Carlsbergs."

"And the other three?"

"English in school, Spanish from the Mexicans, and Navajo from my parents."

The man with the folder taps it on the edge of the exam table. Cecil refuses to flinch.

"You're 4-F, Mister Palmer," Folder says. "In addition to your unfortunate attitude, we've learned some equally unfortunate things regarding your promotion."

Cecil tenses. "You listen, I know people like Josie Masters think I don't have any business being in charge of white people, but I've never missed a single day of work and I have a 92 on my quota--"

"We spoke with a Miss Helen Leroy," Folder says. "Your ex-fiancée, I believe."

"There's a reason she's ex, and she didn't like it," Cecil answers. "She's had a great conspiracy theory for everyone ever since on how I must be up to something because I don't like loose janes.”

“No,” Folder agrees, and Doorman speaks up for the first time.

“Just loose jacks, right?”

Cecil tenses again, tries to think of an appropriate response that isn’t an old-ladyish _how dare you_ , but his mind hangs up on Steve and Eleanor, knowing his secret and still welcoming him into their home, trusting him with their children, and the trouble they could be in, the thing he’s said over and over, _you don’t have to protect me_ , and then he hears Doorman laugh and knows any response he might come up with now is too late.

“As a rule, Mister Palmer, we would escort you to the door right now, and you would be well-advised to comport yourself properly in the future,” Folder says. “However, this precise scenario has put us in an . . . _interesting_ position, shall we say.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And then, because talk about comporting himself gives him an opening, “the worst thing I’ve ever done is bet on a poker game, and that’s not illegal, if it’s for pocket change.”

“Indeed,” Folder muses. “It’s true, we couldn’t find any substance to the most serious of the allegations, although as a rule, young ladies know quite a bit more about what their men are up to than the men credit. Regardless, Mister Palmer, what interests us now is your linguistic ability.”

“I don’t know what that means.” He bites out the words, can’t bring himself to attempt civility about his aborted education. Doorman snorts. Folder just taps his fingers against the tabletop.

“It means, Mister Palmer, that we have a unit of Navajo who are helping us to win this war,” he says. “And one who can speak Russian in any capacity approaching fluency would have value beyond measure. Many of our Navajo soldiers are still only learning English.”

“And you just said I’m not eligible to serve,” Cecil answers. “So it doesn’t really matter, now does it?”

“It matters insofar as we have the ability to discourage some of these rumors,” Folder replies. “We have the authorization to recruit you specially, given your talents.”

“And what if I don’t want to be recruited specially?”

“Then you would return to Cielo Oro with your disqualification as public knowledge, and the Cielo Oro sheriff might find it in his purview to do some asking around about you and your supervisor. Mister Harlan, I believe?”

"Earl?" This time, it's no act: Cecil is genuinely baffled. "What does Earl Harlan have to do with me being disqualified?"

Folder and Doorman look at each other. Cecil can see a question flying back and forth between them, but can't figure out what it is. Finally Folder tosses Cecil's record on the table.

"Make your choice, Mister Palmer," he says. "Other men aren't so lucky."

"I want to know what I get for saying yes," Cecil answers. "Am I going to be allowed to live the rest of my life in peace, or am I going to find myself in some Army bunker being reeducated to be less vocal about what you put my people through?"

"Your future will be what you make of it, Mister Palmer," Folder says. "I can't say whether you'll find it good or bad. I can say that if you finish out your tour of duty with no incidents of misconduct against you, no one need ever know we had this conversation."

Cecil stares until it becomes clear Folder can't be intimidated into looking away. Then he sighs and picks up his file.

"I can't believe I'm doing this."

"Your country thanks you, Mister Palmer."

"The United States thanks me," Cecil corrects. "I'm not sure the Navajo Nation cares."

"Your deployment papers will be delivered to you," Folder says. Cecil barely hears. He's too busy staring at the photograph and single sheet of paper inside.

It's a photo from the Indian school the Carlsbergs rescued him from. He doesn't smile. The single sheet of paper is headed up PALMER, CECIL GERSHWIN and, below that, a single line:

_This file has been redacted._

\-----------------

NIGHT VALE: JUNE 2013

"What is it? What danger are we in? What mystery needs to be explored?"

Under his bandages, Carlos can feel the holes where tiny bullets will have to be tweezed out of his skin. They could have killed him.

They did kill him, and Cecil brought him back.

He doesn't understand how. He doubts he ever will. He just remembers his eyes feeling very heavy, and then Cecil's face over his, colorful feathers dangling down out of his hair, speaking a language Carlos didn't understand.

But was it Cecil? Cecil has feathers--Carlos has seen them, braided carefully into a headband Cecil's worn to a couple of important town functions--but Cecil's nose is broader, eyes bigger, with not so many lines, and--

\--and the man in the bowling alley had even cheekbones.

It wasn't Cecil. It was the Apache Tracker in his ridiculous headdress, and Cecil's face just a hallucination. Blood loss and shock and pain and the desire for a friend as he died--

\-- _wait, what?_

When he called Cecil out here, unsure why it even seemed so important except that it _was_ and it had to be done _right now_ , he had a whole statement to make on the tiny city's artillery and firepower.

Now, watching Cecil hop toward him, not even bothering with the time to wrestle his wheelchair out of the trunk, he's not sure why he cared. Nobody else is going to make the same mistake. He could say nothing. He could say anything, and it wouldn't matter. He could--

"Nothing. I just wanted to see you."

\--tell the truth.

Cecil's mouth falls open. Then he reaches for the top of Carlos' trunk and bends the leg that still has a knee on it, swings it up on the bumper. Carlos says nothing; his year in Night Vale has taught him that much, that Cecil is far from helpless. 

And then Cecil is sitting next to him, a warm and solid weight, and Carlos could say anything, anything at all, _who are you really_ or _why do I feel so safe with you when you're probably one of the most dangerous parts of this town_ or _why did you say you loved me _. But words are powerful in Night Vale, frighteningly powerful, and Carlos isn't sure he trusts them not to twist and mean something he didn't want them to mean.__

__So instead he puts a hand on Cecil's knee, feels the skin warm under Cecil's neatly-sewn up khakis. Cecil gasps and clamps a hand overtop of Carlos', fingers tightening, and Carlos lets out a gasp of his own._ _

__"Sorry, I--"_ _

__He tries to pull his hand away, and Cecil's fingers tighten again._ _

__"No, I--you can," he says at last. There's another long pause, and then Cecil rests his head on Carlos' shoulder._ _

__Carlos has wondered before how truthful Cecil is about the bits and pieces of his own day that sometimes creep into his broadcasts. He finds out that night, listening to the last few minutes of Cecil's broadcast._ _

__Because Cecil doesn't say a word about how suddenly Carlos turns his head or how in only a second's time there's no air between them; never breathes a single syllable about long moments on the hood of Carlos' car before Carlos jerks back with Cecil's fingers on his lips._ _

__"I'm sorry," he stutters, and wishes the flat sodium-arc lights Night Vale still uses would just go out. "I don't know why I--"_ _

__"I do," Cecil says, and smiles a little as he straightens his glasses. "People react to being alive when they think they should be dead in funny ways sometimes."_ _

__His fingers tighten on Carlos' hand again, this time enough that Carlos' fingertips can feel air where a shin should be, and Carlos is pretty sure Cecil isn't just talking about Night Vale in general. Still--_ _

__"That doesn't mean I should've--"_ _

__Cecil's fingers rest on Carlos' lips, light and fluttering. Carlos thinks of his first day in Night Vale, watching Cecil's hands fly and imagining birds._ _

__"Will it help if I tell you I could have broken your arm in three places before you touched me if I'd wanted to?"_ _

__Carlos opens his mouth. Nothing comes out, and Cecil looks down at their joined hands._ _

__"It's not something I just do," he says. "But I can take care of myself if I have to." The broken side of his face quirks in what's probably a smile. "I know what it feels like when you just need a reminder you're alive because your head hasn't gotten the message yet."_ _

__"I . . . Thanks. Thank you, I mean. For coming out here. I should tell you--"_ _

__"Shh." Cecil rests a single finger on Carlos' lips. He looks like he's thinking. Finally he nods, once, and pulls the finger away. "Lean over here."_ _

__Carlos does, at once. He couldn't begin to say why--if Cecil can break an arm in three places in only a second or two he can probably also snap Carlos' neck, and Carlos has certainly had his doubts before about Cecil's sanity. But it seems _all right_ somehow, in a way he's pretty sure has nothing to do with logic either normal or Night Vale, and when Cecil pulls Carlos' head against his clavicle Carlos doesn't resist._ _

__"Listen," Cecil says, and the sound of his voice in his chest reminds Carlos of thunder and under it, a strong and steady drumbeat--_ _

__"Your heart?"_ _

__"Your heart," Cecil tells him. "I learned in the military if you put your head on somebody else's bone you'll hear your own heartbeat from the vein behind your ear."_ _

__Carlos is pretty sure that's spurious science, but the sound is slow and regular and comforting, and they sit that way for a long time watching the lights above the Arby's, Carlos' head on Cecil's chest and Cecil's head on Carlos' shoulder, quiet and comforting. After awhile he realizes Cecil is crying, a steady and near-silent trickle of tears, and squeezes the fingers Cecil's threaded through his own. Cecil raises his head and sighs._ _

__"I should get back to the station," he says, and Carlos opens his mouth to say they've been out here twenty minutes at least, maybe more, and that bird has flown long since. Then he shuts it and wipes a teartrack off Cecil's face. Cecil lets out a shaky laugh._ _

__"I'm sorry. I just--I like having you here, in Night Vale, to talk to . . . "_ _

__"I like being here," Carlos answers, and he's surprised to realize it's true. Then he slides off the trunk. "I--there's not really anything good to grab, up here," he says, and hopes he's not being rude. "Do you want a hand down?"_ _

__Cecil smiles. It's the crooked cheekbone that makes it dazzling, Carlos decides, and then wonders when he started using words like "dazzling" to describe Cecil._ _

__"If I could just use your arm that'd be great," Cecil says, and when Carlos holds it up Cecil hooks his fingers around the crook of Carlos' elbow. "Go ahead and let your arm move with me and I'll follow it down," he advises, and slides off the trunk with all the grace of a dancer. "Are you all right to drive? Because I have to get back to the station, but I can call Josie to pick you up. It wouldn't take her five minutes."_ _

__Carlos shakes his head. "I'm okay. Going to get some food. Uh--Arby's _does_ use roast beef, right?"_ _

__"Of course," Cecil agrees. "They cut it in front of you and everything. But they have chicken, too, if you're worried."_ _

__"I'll trust you," Carlos answers. It's not what he meant to say, he meant to say he'd trust the food, but he's said a lot of things he hasn't meant to say since this afternoon. Cecil smiles._ _

__"Take care of yourself, dear Carlos," Cecil says, and Carlos watches him pull himself into the beat-up Oldsmobile (Oldsmobile! Now there's a name from the history books) Cecil drives, sees him find the unusually high pedals before he closes his door and waves. Carlos waves back and heads for the Arby's._ _

__He's halfway through his sandwich when it occurs to him the radio station is all the way across town, and the weather is never more than five minutes long, and Cecil's car is custom-equipped for his legs and do they seriously still make Oldsmobiles in Night Vale?_ _

__And also: he owes Cecil for the level of compassion he received tonight. He's aware Cecil is infatuated with him on levels that hover between slightly amusing and slightly creepy, but that doesn't make what he did any more excusable; if anything, he thinks, it's less so, tantamount to leading him on._ _

__So he can do one of two things, either kindly but firmly tell Cecil it was what he assumed--a reaction to shock-trauma, nothing more--or he can trust the instinct that led him to call Cecil in the first place, the voice that convinced him it was Cecil clasping his hand in the bowling alley, and--_ _

__And the crying he heard wasn't the kind he'd expect out of a stalker or a lunatic. It was genuinely heartbroken._ _

__And nobody, after all, has ever said a single date is a marriage contract, and even smitten Cecil has to realize they don't really know each other, strictly speaking._ _

__His team is never going to let him live this down._ _

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still available at prismatic-bell.tumblr.com


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FINISHED IT I FINALLY FINISHED IT holy mother of god this chapter is long
> 
> Anyway, a few friendly warnings:
> 
> \--There are casual slurs in the 1940s section, rather a few more than usual. (Part of this is that some of the words in question were not considered slurs at the time, but are now.)  
> \--There's also some oblique discussion of Mauthausen labor camp in Austria.   
> \--There is discussion of reeducation, which is done chemically via injection in this fic.  
> \--Cecil is in a lot of pain in parts of this chapter, and medicates accordingly. Warnings for controlled substances and medical pot.  
> \--Carlos is not trying to be an ableist asshole. Sometimes he just comes off that way because he truly, legitimately, actually does not know that what he is doing is assholish. Cecil doesn't call him on it as harshly as he could because (see last bullet point).  
> \--And finally, some mentions of Strex. Although this fic _is canon-divergent_ before the worst of the Strex plot kicked in, that doesn't mean Cecil got off any easier with the version of Strex in this backstory, and if you're like me, that's pretty damned upsetting.

NIGHT VALE: JUNE 2015

"Sit with me a few minutes. Two years and you're shoving me out the door, I think I deserve better than that."

Cecil takes Carlos' hands, raises the backs to his forehead. "I'm always sitting."

"You know what I mean, Cecil."

"Yes." Cecil still doesn't look up from Carlos' hands. "I suppose I do. Carlos, please understand." At last he looks up, and Carlos almost wishes he hadn't. Cecil's eyes are still swimming with tears. "I don't want you to go. But if you do I can always imagine you happy out there, with somebody . . . somebody else." He takes off his glasses and swipes an arm across his eyes. "And you will be. You won't even remember me. You can--you can be happy, and do your work and make incredible discoveries and have a family--"

"I have a family. Two parents embarrassed they didn't birth a neurosurgeon, and you." He sits on the floor, and Cecil slides out of his chair into Carlos' lap. "If I can't stay then you should come with me. I know you can't just walk away from your job, but jobs are cheap in New York and so are apartments, in Buffalo, anyway, and I could find a place while you tie up loose ends--"

He finally peters off, convinced by Cecil's head shaking that continuing is an exercise in futility. Cecil strokes his hair.

"It's not that I wouldn't," he says. "I would. I'd hand in my notice tomorrow if it'd change anything."

"You can't leave?"

"If we could leave, my dear, Night Vale would have been a ghost town two centuries before you ever heard of it. I'd be interested to know how you did, if you don't mind telling."

"Not much to tell. Travelers getting lost and coming through town. Most people brush those stories off as dreams or road fatigue. I thought there were too many to account for that way. The closest town to here, about forty miles off, it's full of stories about a pair of phantom towns--"

"That'll be Milagro," Cecil murmurs dreamily. "There used to be a whole string of these little mining towns. Six of them. Mesa Grande to our north, Desert Bluffs to our south, Milagro south of that."

Carlos manages not to jump. "It's called Agua Fresco," he says. "But it was called Milagro until the 2070s or so. They changed the name after the big one finally hit and they decided a town called Miracle was in poor taste. Why is it called Night Vale?"

Cecil stretches, curls up in Carlos' lap like he plans to nap there. It occurs to Carlos, briefly, that there's a strong probability they're being watched. "That's what the part of the Manhattan Project that took place here was called," Cecil explains. “We used to be a mining town. There were gold mines all through the canyon, veins so rich they said afternoons you could look up under the southern overhangs and see nothing but sparkle."

“So that’s why it was called Cielo Oro.”

“Mm.” Cecil shrugs and nods. “I never really looked into the town history, but it makes sense. And then during the war they put this little base in there and told us it was to secure the town because gold would be in high demand. I didn’t know until your 1980s that it was actually a classified project, and I still wouldn’t know if John Peters hadn’t had one of his primary memories slide through. He worked on it. Operation Night Vale, that is. By 1944--we were still Cielo Oro then, it was your 1944 too--half the town was scientists and Army men. We thought nobody would remember us, if everything left was classified."

“I don’t think anybody really did. Night Vale is just--it’s just a creepy story. Something kids scare each other with. But I had a lot of downtime the year before I came here. I did a whole lot of hunting for these phantom towns and not much else. And if you go back far enough, you find a Mormon splinter religion that settled here and tried to farm the place. They called it Cibola, but I checked an old map, it’s the same place.”

"They were splinter, all right," Cecil interjects. "I wasn't kidding about the soft-meat crowns. When my father was killed one of the fuckers cut open the bottoms of his feet because they thought dead blood was sacred.” It’s the first time Carlos has ever heard Cecil use the word--in that context, at least--and suddenly he realizes just how many years lie between them. To him, even the larger church, the ones who called themselves Latter-Day Saints, are nothing but words on a page, the few hundred remaining members no more credible than flat-earthers. To Cecil they are a world of pain, and Carlos feels Cecil pull him closer, trace the shape of one of Carlos’ shrapnel scars through his shirt. “I’m still not sure how you found us on purpose. People have, before, but not for years. And usually because they didn't have anywhere else to go. I think Nasr was the last, and that was in your 2020s."

"You say that like I did have somewhere else to go," Carlos answers, and then the door to the booth opens and someone he doesn't know steps in. Cecil knows, though--of course he does--and he shakes his head frantically.

"Just a few more minutes, _please_ \--"

The woman Carlos doesn't know has very red lipstick. It matches her business suit. She also has very blonde hair that looks like it might be beautiful, if it were loose instead of yanked into a screamingly tight bun. She doesn't smile.

"Cecil, you know the law--"

"I know!" Cecil's fingers tighten in Carlos' shirt. "I know." Carlos feels Cecil's tears start soaking through his shirt. "Just let me say goodbye, would you?"

There's a long moment when Carlos thinks the woman might simply tear Cecil out of his arms and drag him away to whatever fate Night Vale reserves for people who learn too much. And then something changes in her face. Carlos thinks it might be sympathy.

"I have to take him now, but you can come with us. Into the public areas only," she adds, and Carlos restrains a shudder. He must not be completely successful, because Cecil strokes his hair and pats his cheek and tries to smile. The result is ghastly.

"It doesn't hurt," he says, and something in Carlos' heart hurts that Cecil is trying so hard to be calm for him. "It's just an injection. Flu shots are worse."

Carlos closes his eyes and rests his forehead against Cecil's, wishes he had Cecil's way with words. He could say this isn't how he saw them ending, but the truth is, he never saw them ending at all. And he could ask if Cecil would be so quick to comply with Strexcorp--except the scars the corrupt organization left on Cecil's psyche are deeper and more hurtful than even the ones where Cecil's legs used to be, and that is a weapon Carlos could never wield against him.

"Doctor Melendez, it's time to go."

"Wait." Words he's terrible at, but he and Cecil long ago developed their own way of talking, and he rummages in his pocket. "I want you to keep this. It's not a commitment, anymore . . . but you should have it."

Cecil closes his eyes and holds out his right hand for Carlos to slide the ring on. Carlos doesn't question the decision; if anything, he welcomes it. A widower's ring means Cecil might someday move on and find someone else to cherish. 

Carlos feels a hand on his shoulder. It's just a touch of fingers, but he has no doubt what it means, and he gets first to one knee and then to his feet, holding out a single hand for Cecil to balance. _I don't need it, but you get used to better in a hurry,_ Cecil said when Carlos confessed his ignorance of wheelchair etiquette, and Cecil is going to have to get used to worse again all too soon.

"All right," he says, and bites his tongue before he can suggest they'd better make him if they want him out. They would--of that he has no doubt--and Cecil doesn't need to see it: Carlos has the feeling Cecil already knows all too well about Night Vale's system of government. 

He's close enough to being a part of it, after all.

\---------------

EUROPE: JANUARY 1944

Being a spy is nothing like Captain America and the movies would have Cecil believe.

There are no long stakeouts in the bitter wild, and certainly no Red Skull. There _is_ a lot of hovering over a radio speaking Russian and Navajo in Morse code, and once nearly being arrested by an SS officer until he produced the passport and business card, all perfectly proper and in order, of Cecil Baldwin, American citizen from Phoenix, Arizona, in Luxembourg on a business trip. A Ford Motorcar employee, of course. Seig Heil! And the officer apparently knows little enough of American business, or of the irony of an American Indian swearing by Hitler (Cecil has heard stories that most of the soldiers he's met think are too terrible to be credible; Cecil just thinks Adolf Hitler sounds a hell of a lot like Andrew Jackson), that he lets Cecil go.

But on the whole it's uneventful, a lot of important information traveling through Cecil's hands with no input from him, and when Luxembourg becomes too dangerous he gets a message of his own on his little dit-dah and the SS officers who turn up to arrest him this time--not to be put off by a smile and a passport--are greeted with a hotel room empty of everything except a passport and an engraved card case, both wiped carefully free of fingerprints.

His superior officer would probably tear out his hair, but Cecil couldn't resist.

Two days later a man named Joseph Palmer crosses the border into Switzerland: medical reasons. Cecil keeps his face as impassive as he can and hopes they won't decide to detain him until they can check his entry documents. The passport is excellent, but the Social Security number belongs to a boy who--if he'd lived--would be only sixteen.

They don't detain him. They do ask how long he plans to stay, and he works up a good cough before saying he can't say, he's sure--he was told the mountain air would help his asthma. They tell him he'll need to speak with a consul in whichever city he chooses to reside. He nods and coughs and finds a tiny mountain town with a good radio signal and no consulate, and pulls up the floorboards under his bed to make a hiding place for the dit-dah. 

If he's caught doing military work in neutral Switzerland, he'll be imprisoned. Military work--Axis or Allied--is illegal.

It's exhilarating.

There's a boy seventeen or eighteen years old in the village who brings poor asthmatic Mr. Palmer his groceries and mail, sometimes with a coy smile that suggests he'd bring more than that if Cecil asked. Cecil doesn't--he's all too mindful of the veiled threats made at his intake--but after a few weeks he offers the boy five American dollars on top of what he already pays if the boy will be his guide for a short hike, and for the rest of his time in Switzerland he has an excuse to get out without exciting comment.

He's in Switzerland long enough to get a letter from Steve and Eleanor with two photographs in it--there's a letter every week, but this is the first with an enclosure, and it makes him smile: Steve, Eleanor, and the kids, now with a pair of additions noted in Eleanor's flowing hand: _you were right again. I don't know how you do that._ Cecil wasn't completely right--he said a boy, not twins--but more importantly he asked a favor before he left, and he feels tears in his eyes when he sees the names written under the photograph: _John Palmer Carlsberg,_ , says one of them, and that doesn't surprise him, he asked them to name the singleton he expected after his father, but the name written under the second baby is Joseph Matthew--Cecil's brother. Both of them were named, in finest Jewish tradition, for honored deceased. Cecil replies with three letters stuffed in a single envelope, one for Steve and Eleanor and one each for the boys carrying his family's names, to be read at their bar mitzvah. If he dies over here--which seems unlikely, but it could happen--they’ll know about the men they’re named for.

There’s also a picture of a girl with green eyes and dark hair and very red lips who almost looks familiar, but she's not Native--Mexican, maybe, Cecil thinks, or maybe just very tanned. Cecil wonders why Eleanor went to the time and expense to get a color exposure; he's pretty sure the Carlsbergs don't own a Kodachrome. There's a note on the back of the photograph that says _from your Judy,_ so at some point it probably belonged to someone else. It's a mystery for another day, he decides, and leaves the photo on his kitchen table after tucking the photo of the Carlsbergs into his wallet.

He slowly lets on that his lungs have improved, takes some small exercise on his own to smoke unobserved when he can expect the radio to be silent, and so he's on his own the day he stumbles--literally--across a camp made of rags stretched across sticks, dug into the ground. He goes sprawling across the path, and then someone grabs his shoulder.

Cecil doesn't wait to see if the hand intends to help or harm--Switzerland is a heavily-armed country, and he drops his shoulder, twists, and draws, and then he has an extremely startled, frightened German soldier with raised hands on the other end of his gun. The sight shocks him so much he almost drops his weapon. 

"You are American soldier," the German says. Cecil reminds himself he has to stay impassive.

"I don't know what you're talking about, I'm sure," he says, and does a pretty credible job of wheezing. "I came from Arizona for medical reasons--"

The German's hands are still raised, but he's shaking his head. Not good. "You are very fast," he says. "And I have been smoking the scraps from your cigarettes. You are not sick. And that is a military gun, and I am your prisoner."

Cecil is so busy swearing at himself he almost misses the last sentence. "I'm--what?"

"I ran," the German says. "From Austria. The camps. I will turn myself in to you. I would rather face an American court than Hitler."

"I'm here as a civilian," Cecil answers, and before he can say more there's a loud crack, and a shout, and then a long plume of flame from the general area of his cabin. Cecil scrambles to his feet and swears. The German shakes his head, grabs Cecil's hand, and yanks him down the path.

"Hey--!"

"They will look for you," the German tells him. "They know. And I am wrong, yes? You are more than just a soldier. We go this way. Through the mountains, into France."

"Okay, one, I don't know you, two, I don't trust you, and three, France is kind of _under Nazi control_ right now, do you think I'm stupid?"

"Is the fastest way to England," the German answers. "And that is still Allied. You can hide, I will take a moped from a camp and we will cross the Channel in two days. Faster, if you want to risk Paris. Even now there are tourists."

"You're German."

"I did not vote for Hitler and my mother did not either." The German gestures distastefully at his armband. "This, I still needed a coat. Come, they are looking," he adds, and pulls Cecil neatly off the path as someone shouts. "I could have shot you three days ago and did not, and if that is not reason enough to trust me I will leave you to do as you wish, but if you go back, they will arrest you, if they do not kill you. And now you must _run_ , do you understand?"

Cecil does. Someone in that crowd of shouting men just yelled his real name, and he doubts he'd live to see trial if he were found here, now, and so he runs, stopping only once to pull the German onto his back after he falls and grabs his own ankle.

Half an hour later, Cecil slows to a walk. An hour after that he pauses long enough to tie a strip of his undershirt around his companion's ankle, and yet an hour further along he finally stops.

"We've probably covered ten miles," he says. "Maybe a little more. If you have some brilliant plan, now would be a great time to share it."

"I wanted to make better time," the German complains. "But that fall, I do not think I can run, and I have slowed you down. We can camp here for the night and cross the border tomorrow. Then it is about a day to England, if we take a moped and travel along the border. Dangerous, but fast. My name is Hans," he adds, and, bizarrely, holds out a hand. Cecil is startled enough to take it, and as he does it occurs to him only three men have willingly shaken his hand, here or Stateside, in his entire life. "Thank you for my life."

"Thank you for mine. I think. Let's see this gun of yours."

Hans reaches into his pack and pulls out a leather canteen, takes a long swig and passes it over. "This, first. I keep it under the food."

Cecil drinks. "You have food?"

"A little. Not much."

"Matches?"

"One box. Almost full."

"Do those armbands come off?"

"With effort."

"Food won't be a problem. The gun, Hans, I'm serious."

Hans digs through his pack. Finally his hands emerge, fingers wrapped around the barrel of a Luger. Excellent. Not as good as a pepper shooter, but still good. Cecil checks it over. Clean.

"I'm keeping this."

"I thought you will."

"You speak damned good English for a kraut," Cecil says, and puts the Luger in the knapsack he carried on what was supposed to be a half-hour smoke break. 

"My mother's father is from England. If we make it to London I have cousins who may help me at my trial."

"Color me curious. What's the rush to the firing squad for?"

A shadow drops over Hans' face, and he shakes his head. "I had no way to help, but maybe I can stop more harm. It is terrible, the things that are happening. Would you not rather risk that, than to kill?"

"You're asking the wrong person. Let's see what we can do with this, shall we?" Cecil snaps open his pocketknife and grabs at the armband. Hans shakes his head, then pulls his arm out of the sleeve and holds it flat. "So you're a deserter, if you're not a spy."

Hans shakes his head. "Do you know what Hitler is doing? To the Jews, and the gypsies and the halfwits? All the people he thinks are below him, what he calls not of good stock?"

"I don't know facts. I've heard stories." Cecil sets to work hacking open the armband's seams. "Mass disappearances, mostly. But all those warm bodies have to go somewhere and turning them into cold bodies seems pretty efficient. So say the US Marines."

"They are right." Hans closes his eyes. "I was assigned to one of these camps and worked there a single day. My god, the screams. I left the barracks that night."

He covers his face with his hands. Cecil considers trying to pry the rest out of him and decides it doesn't matter: the specifics never do. He leaves Hans where he is, takes the armband over his knees and closes his eyes. 

He doesn't think he says anything aloud, but he hears Hans take in a deep and uneven breath before saying "I do not speak that much English."

"Hm?"

"What you just said, I . . . I did not understand."

"It's not English. It's--" Cecil pauses. "Do you know what 'Navajo' means?" 

Hans shakes his head. Cecil finds a stick and starts binding up one end of the armband. "It's a kind of American Indian. The same as Germans and English and Italians are all European."

"I understand. And this--this people, you said, that is their language?"

"Yes. If the government doesn't manage to destroy it."

"It is very beautiful. Why would they?"

"Why does Herr Adolf dislike menorahs?" Cecil pries stones out of the cold soil. He left the cabin with only a sandwich wrapped in paper and a half-full canteen, and when he's done with the stones he pops a handful of snow into the canteen. "It's a prayer my father taught me. Bless this thing so that life may come out of death. You say it when you hunt."

"A gun is dangerous. Someone may hear."

"Only white men need guns." Cecil loads a stone into the armband and puts a finger to his lips. Hans falls silent, and Cecil rises to his feet.

Cecil hunts down four birds with his makeshift slingshot while Hans builds a fire. Cecil cooks the birds whole, wraps what they don't eat in the paper from his sandwich and douses the fire.

They sleep that night in relative comfort from the still-hot ashes of the fire, but the next day they're over the border and racing on a moped stolen from a German camp, and when they stop for the night in an abandoned watchpost Cecil is shivering. Hans looks concerned.

"Are you ill?"

Cecil shakes his head and blows on his fingers. "It's a lot warmer in California." He pulls the last of the birds out of Hans' pack and splits it. There won't be rations in the morning--when Cecil will shed his stolen Nazi jacket before the crossing--but in spite of the occupation there's still a ferry, and if they've calculated right they can be at the American consulate by eleven--the morning pastry on the boat will be enough.

Cecil tosses a pack of jerky out of the pack, and Hans grabs his hand. Cecil tenses. 

And then his hand is warm, and Hans is reaching for the other. Cecil flexes his fingers inside the gloves.

"You're going to freeze."

"It is colder in Germany."

"Thanks."

They eat in silence and bury their leavings in the same, broken only by a humming that makes Cecil raise his head and stare.

"Isn't that the Andrews Sisters?"

"You know them?"

"Most popular singers in America, of course I know the Andrews Sisters." Cecil smoothes over the dirt. "How do you know them?"

"There are radio stations that play American music." Hans pauses. "Or, there were."

"You miss it."

"Mm. My brother and I would listen, sometimes, on nights when we did not have to go blackout."

"I didn't know Germany did American anything."

"There is also the Mickey Mouse," Hans offers, and Cecil laughs.

"I would say we've got Marlene Dietrich, but I've only ever heard her in English. I know she's German, though, I heard a broadcast of one of her concerts once."

"She sings for the same better Germany I hope will come, when people stop being afraid."

"People never stop being afraid." Cecil finds a stick, draws in the dirt, then throws the stick down. "I'm not turning you in."

"What?"

"I said, I'm not turning you in." Cecil takes a last strip of jerky to chew over. "If I tell them you're a Nazi soldier I captured, you'll be a prisoner and they might even send you back as an exchange. You'll be dead in a week. If I tell them you're a refugee who saved my life you'll have a better chance."

"But you could save a countryman. An Ally."

"You shook my hand."

"That means so much?"

"To me it does." Cecil stretches. "You might as well sleep. I took a kip on the moped."

"You watched last night, you will never stay awake."

"I'll manage."

"And tomorrow? You should sleep. We have a better chance if you speak. My accent will give us away."

"I'm too full of juice to sleep."

"I do not know what that means."

"The way you felt the night before you shipped out."

"Then think of home. It is what I do."

"My home died with my family. I just live in a town I'm not supposed to leave because Uncle Sam likes having his eye on me."

"Then, the place you would like to be, when the war is over."

"I just want to go. Pack a bindle, and get the hell out of there."

"Then you will make it heaven.”

Cecil gapes for a second, not entirely sure what Hans means. Then he gets it, and starts laughing, too tired to keep his voice down. Hans grins, then joins in. "Shh, shh!"

"You shh," Cecil says, and holds his sides. It's not funny, not really, but they're so close, and is it too much to hope they can cause a change? He finally covers his mouth, rocking back and forth in the snow, and lets his attack of the giggles subside. "I think I needed that." He smiles, but it's a real smile this time, not acting or hysteria, and it feels strange on his face. "You know, when you laugh, you look like my kid brother. Only white."

"When you make the face--" And Hans imitates Cecil concentrating. "You look like mine. A little more brown. But he is older than me."

"What's his name?"

"Wilhelm. What is yours?"

"His name was Joseph. I called him Joby."

"I am sorry." A long pause. "But, what is Joby?"

"How he said it when he was too little to get it right. 'Hello, I Jozeb'," Cecil mimics. "Nobody used it but me. Just to be an annoying big brother, you know?"

"I call Wilhelm 'brüderchen'," Hans answers. "But that is not from his name."

"What is it?"

"It is to say he is the little brother. He is, I forget how to say . . . " Hans frowns. Then he puts a hand to his chin, palm down. "His head, you see?"

He's shorter than you?" Hans' eyes light up and he nods, and Cecil snickers. "He must hate that."

Hans grins. "Always he is yelling when he says it."

Cecil laughs, covers his mouth with his hands--too loud. Then he yawns. "You must miss it."

"Yes." Hans' smile fades. "The last time I saw him he was going to his own regiment. There were three letters. Then, nothing."

"I'm sorry."

"Maybe is better this way. If he never got my letter that I was called then he cannot be questioned, you see?"

Cecil doesn't say that he sees someone in denial. Instead he nods. He hasn't actually figured out Hans' age, but Hans has been sleeping rough for a week and there's only the barest downy fuzz on his chin and cheeks. He might even be sixteen, Cecil thinks--the resemblance might go that far. Hans sighs and rummages in the pack. "You should sleep."

"Tell me about where you live." Cecil shivers and rubs at his arms and considers if sleep is actually a smart idea. Hans unzips his coat and gestures Cecil closer.

"It is full of flowers. Here," he says, and wraps his arms around Cecil's waist. Definitely under eighteen, Cecil decides; under the uniform, Hans is that particular kind of string bean that means teenager. He pauses, long, all the joy gone from his demeanor. "I saw them in the camp this way."

Cecil wraps his own arms around Hans' back. Hans rests his face on Cecil's shoulder and cries. Cecil wishes he could stick a knife in the prissy asshole responsible for so much heartbreak. At last Hans quietens.

"Sorry."

"For being a human being. How terrible."

Hans swipes at his eyes. "I think it is after midnight."

"Might be." Cecil yawns. Hans tugs his jacket closer around them both.

"Then sleep," he says, and Cecil does.

\---------

NIGHT VALE: JULY 2013

There’s more to amputation than Carlos would have ever guessed, and he finds it out firsthand on what’s supposed to be their third date.

Cecil is late, which isn't without precedent; everybody in Night Vale ends up late on a semiregular basis because of the disasters that regularly befall the town, coupled with the clocks. But Cecil has shown up for their last two dates exactly one minute early, and at--Carlos glances at his phone out of sheer useless habit--what's supposedly twenty past, Carlos calls him.

One word is enough to tell Carlos something is terribly wrong; Cecil's letters, usually so crisp and confident, stumble over each other like clumsy dance partners. Their second date was pool at the bar--something Cecil is surprisingly adept at, hefting himself onto the side of the table to make shots anyone else would call tricks--and they walked so neither of them would have to abstain, and even after two glasses of wine and a shared pina colada Cecil sounded as sober and orderly as he would giving the community calendar. Tonight he picks up the phone and what comes out of his mouth sounds more like “herra?” than “hello,” and when Carlos identifies himself Cecil’s only response is a weirdly laconic “oh. Hi.” Carlos shifts uncomfortably in his chair.

“Cecil, are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m. You know. Listen, I’m a little . . . . . who is this again?”

Carlos has heard the term “his heart turned to ice in his chest,” and he’s always thought it sounded stupidly cliche. The drowsy confusion in Cecil’s voice changes his mind; there really is a feeling like someone poured a bucket of ice water down your insides, he discovers.

“It’s Carlos, Cecil. We were meeting for coffee, remember?”

“Carlos! What do I owe this honor to?” There’s a pause just long enough for Carlos to consider hanging up and then Cecil speaks again, still slurry but now genuinely dismayed. “Oh, no, I was supposed to meet you at the diner--shit!” 

The last word follows a soft thump and isn’t spoken directly into the phone, and then it’s followed by a pained cry. Carlos gets up from the table and books it for the parking lot. He’s not sure what’s wrong with Cecil, exactly, but he intends to find out.

He finds Cecil’s spare key taped to the backside of the mail slot, and he’s no sooner in the door than his heart is in his mouth--metaphorically, he feels the need to think, even only to himself. 

Cecil is sprawled sideways on the sofa, half a dozen pill bottles open before him, a large pad of paper and glass of water alongside, the reek of marijuana in the air. His phone is on the floor, probably where it fell when Carlos heard the thump, and at first Carlos isn’t even sure he’s breathing. Then Cecil shifts with a low groan, and Carlos hurries to his side to pull him out of the heap he's in. Cecil stares up at him in muzzy confusion.

"Carros?"

"It's okay," he says, not bothering to correct Cecil's pronunciation and thinking to himself he didn't sign up for this. "What's with the pills?"

Cecil gathers himself into coherency--Carlos can see him do it. "Leg pain. 'S always bad when the weather turns but that snowstorm . . . My ankles feel like they were dipped in flesh-eating bacteria." He opens his eyes, takes in the consternation on Carlos' face. "Phantom pain," he says at last. "I know they're not really there. Doesn't help." 

Carlos tries to imagine pain in a place he can't touch. Then he perches on the coffee table and looks at Cecil's pad of paper. Ibuprofen, it says, and acetaminophen, and Vicodin, and feverfew, and aspirin. There are numbers next to each, and after a few moments he realizes Cecil is tracking his medication times. Vicodin. No wonder he sounded like such a mess on the phone.

"Have you eaten today?"

Cecil frowns. "I poured cereal," he says at last. Carlos takes it as a no.

"If I order takeout will you have some?"

"That would be nice," Cecil says, with a level of thoughtfulness Carlos would reserve for higher philosophy. "Oh, but I'm terrible company--"

"You don't have to be any kind of company at all. I came because I was worried, not to be entertained."

“Oh,” Cecil says, and looks like he’s pondering the kind of age-old question he routinely brings up on the radio. “Yes,” he says at last. “I’d like that.”

Carlos looks at the level in the waterglass and frowns. “I’ll get food and tea,” he says, and Cecil offers him a smile too loopy to be brilliant. Instead it breaks his heart a little, and he escapes to the kitchen to put on water and call for Chinese.

And to clean up the box of Lucky Charms scattered across Cecil’s counter and floor, because the pattern of the spilled cereal is clear enough to hurt his heart: he can see Cecil clambering grimly into the seat of his chair so he can use his grabber to reach, the sudden stab of pain, Cecil squeezing the handles of the grabber until the box popped open and scattered cereal hither and yon across the counter and the bowl he’d set there, the clumsy last-minute effort to grab the box that spilled the rest of its contents across the floor and into the sink. Somehow, he thinks, as he sweeps spilled cereal out of the corners, the _kind_ of cereal makes it worse; it could be shredded wheat, or corn flakes, or even Flaky-Os but instead it’s brightly-colored, dessicated marshmallows that bring up a vague memory of watching cartoons before school when Carlos still had scabby knees and missing teeth. Of course Cecil eats Lucky Charms. He’s already confessed to keeping children’s Claritin for his allergies because it tastes better and it works, Carlos really shouldn’t be surprised.

He brings back two steaming cups of whatever he found in Cecil’s cupboard--everything in it is written in a language he doesn’t understand and thinks might be Unmodified Sumerian--and a promise that dinner is on the way. Cecil curls up into Carlos’ side and reaches for one of the mugs, and Carlos shakes his head.

“Your hands are shaking,” he says, and holds the mug so Cecil can drink. “You’re probably having a glucose defic--you need sugar from good food,” he corrects, changing course midstream. Cecil said on their first date he started out wanting to be a human pathologist (a name Carlos is pretty sure Cecil dredged from the farthest back corners of his memory, because it definitely doesn’t match Cecil’s description of researching viral illnesses), but his knowledge of the subject is unsystematic and prone to Night Vale-sized gaps of censorship and misinformation, and Carlos isn’t going to make it worse when Cecil is high on painkillers. “Do you want a piece of fruit or something until the food gets here?”

Cecil shakes his head and shifts, then yelps in pain. That’s exactly the word for it, Carlos thinks, as he jerks back--it sounds like exactly that, an animal stuck in one of the old bear traps he’s seen pictures of. Cecil takes a deep and snuffling breath in Carlos’ ear.

“Sorry,” he says, and Carlos bites his tongue. “It’s my stupid _knee_ \--”

Carlos reaches down and cups his hand, still hot from Cecil’s mug, around the stump below Cecil’s knee. Cecil gasps, and Carlos jerks away. Cecil stares, mouth open, and then reaches for Carlos’ hand to move it back--slowly, like he thinks he’s the one doing something inappropriate--and closes his eyes, lashes fluttering against his uneven cheeks, at the touch. Carlos takes a breath.

“It’s--heat,” he says at last. “It can help pain. Real pain. I mean--pain in parts of you that are still there. Physically.”

A smile ghosts across Cecil’s face, and then he rests his head against Carlos’ shoulder. “It doesn’t--scare you?”

“What doesn’t?”

“Touching my stump.” 

“Should it?”

Cecil shrugs, slowly. Carlos wonders if he’s falling asleep, or just relaxing now that he’s not going to slither off the sofa. “A lot of people are afraid of touching me. Or the chair, I think you’re the first person I’ve ever met who just, you know . . . put a hand on it while we talked. Like it didn’t matter.”

“I’m not afraid of you anymore. I haven’t been since . . . since that first time we had coffee, probably.” Carlos feels Cecil’s cheeks stretch out in a sardonic smile and rubs his stump. “Any better?”

“A little, actually. Thank you.” He turns his head to rub against Carlos’ shoulder like a cat, and Carlos isn’t stupid enough to think he’s only saying thank you for the heat. 

He nuzzles back, and they sit that way until a hideous buzzing noise like a thousand cicadas slowly being tortured fills Cecil’s apartment. Carlos jumps in surprise.

“Is--is that your _doorbell_?”

Cecil makes a vague noise of assent, and Carlos eases himself out of Cecil’s arms to answer the door. The smells of lo mein and stir fry fill the apartment, and as Carlos sets the thick paper bag down on the coffee table he sees Cecil perk up. Good.

Carlos fixes both of them a plate, and they sit in companionable silence, nibbling their way through spring rolls and noodles and meat until Cecil finally picks up his mug and takes a long drink.

“Thanks,” he says, and rests his head against Carlos’ shoulder again. “Not being alone is better.”

Carlos squeezes Cecil’s hand. Cecil sits up and makes a terrible face before examining the pad of paper and reaching for the ibuprofen bottle. 

“I’m sorry I frightened you.”

“You don’t need to be sorry. I just thought--when I heard your phone fall, I mean--”

Cecil pops the ibuprofen in his mouth and takes a long drink of his tea. “It’s the Vicodin. I think when you called I was--not _sleeping_ , exactly, it’s not really like sleeping, but--” He frowns. “You know what they call it when you take heroin and you do that? Nodding out? It’s like that, I think.”

“Are you sure that wasn’t the pot? If you’re THC-sensitive--”

Cecil shakes his head. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be,” Carlos says, and leans over to kiss Cecil’s cheek. 

Cecil turns his head. Carlos considers pulling away; he doesn't think Cecil is high on purpose, but that doesn't change the massive quantities of painkillers he’s been putting in his body since he woke up that morning.

On the other hand, he thinks, Cecil is easily the most tactile person Carlos has ever met, wandering fingers examining everything in his path, and they’ve certainly done this before. Carlos can draw the line there. So he lets Cecil kiss him, run curious hands through his hair and over his shirt cuffs until Cecil actually tries to fumble open his buttons, and then he puts a gentle hand over Cecil’s fingers to push him away.

“Let’s wait,” he suggests, and when Cecil looks put out Carlos kisses his temple. “Just for now, okay? Until your legs are better.”

Cecil pouts, but rests his head back on Carlos’ shoulder. “They don’t hurt as much,” he says, but it’s no more than a token protest. Carlos reaches up to stroke Cecil’s hair. Cecil puts a hand on Carlos’ knee.

He’s not sure how long they’re silent, only that suddenly Cecil says “endorphins,” and it’s been long enough that Carlos’ response is a graceful and articulate “huh?”

“Endorphins,” Cecil repeats. “After our first date I went home and pulled out a couple of my old science books, and Karen in Accounting saw me reading and gave me this magazine article--oh, I don’t remember what it was called, it was one of those articles you get in magazines that run leaders like 27 Ways To Spice Up Your Sex Life, but this one was actually interesting because it was about body chemistry and one of the things it said was that kissing releases endorphins, and that’s why when you say you’ll kiss something better it actually works.”

"If you want to learn about brain chemistry, there are way better places than Cosmopolitan Magazine. 'Pretty much anywhere' is a start. I think I’ve still got a textbook on my reader that I paid a permanent license for in college that you could read.”

“Is it municipally approved?”

“Will they know, if it’s not?”

“Unlikely. Unapproved books are a relatively low-level crime as long as they don’t turn sentient and start attacking people.”

“I think we’re safe there,” Carlos says, and shifts on the sofa to offer Cecil some water. “Does this happen often?”

Cecil shakes his head and looks shamefaced. Carlos can’t help it: he strokes Cecil’s cheek, cups his palm there to try and take that look away. It doesn’t help. “Usually only for weather changes. Big ones, you know, not just a little rain shower or something. Otherwise, every once in awhile. You don’t have to deal with it, it’s my own prob--”

Cecil goes obediently silent when Carlos kisses him; he’s heard enough. It’s a soft kiss, just a press of lips meant to still the flow of words, but Cecil still lets out a little “oh” when Carlos pulls away.

“I could be wrong,” he says. “The only long-term relationship I’ve ever had, we divorced after four months. But I’m pretty sure the point in having a partner is to support each other.”

Cecil’s smile looks wavery. “The only long-term relationship I’ve ever had ended when he saw me with phantom pains.”

“Well, he was an asshole, then.”

Cecil rests his head on Carlos’ shoulder. “He was my best friend.”

Carlos wraps his arms around Cecil’s shoulders. He’s heard that description before. “I’m sorry.”

Cecil sighs and sags into Carlos’ side. Carlos runs his fingers through Cecil’s hair and glances at his watch.

“It’s getting close to curfew,” he comments. Cecil doesn’t move.

“Uh-huh.”

“Maybe we can do something tomorrow if you’re feeling up to it?”

“Uh-huh.” 

There’s a pause just long enough for Carlos to wonder if he’s going to have to gently remind Cecil he has to leave, and then Cecil raises his head sleepily.

“Thanks for sitting with me.”

Carlos squeezes his hand. “No problem. I can help you get into your room if you don’t want to fight with the chair.”

And that’s when it all goes south. Cecil’s expression changes from one of sleepy, gentle disgruntlement to one that’s pinched and downright sour.

“I think I can handle getting to bed on my own even with the chair,” he says, and Carlos stares.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t, I just--”

“You just don’t think poor little me should have to deal with it? Or maybe that I’m going to kill myself taking a header because I’m on painkillers? I’ve been doing this for years without help, Carlos, I don’t need it now.”

“Okay, I’m sorry.” Carlos holds his hands up. “I’ll put away the food. Unless you want to.”

Cecil’s lips thin down into a line as he reaches for one of the pill bottles. “If you’d care to that’s fine.”

Carlos closes up the containers and takes them to the kitchen without comment. Cecil’s fridge is close to bare; Carlos isn’t sure if it’s because Cecil tends toward prepackaged bachelor fare or if it’s time for a shopping trip, but the leftovers will serve him well tomorrow either way. He stops and considers Cecil’s kitchen with its too-high cupboards and narrow pantry door, and reaches into the cupboard above the sink to pull out an unopened box of--he looks at the front--Frosted Flakes. Right.

Cecil can yell at him tomorrow. Carlos can’t leave knowing Cecil could wake up tomorrow to fight the whole damned breakfast battle over again if he’s still in pain.

Cecil is rubbing one of his stumps when Carlos heads back into the living room and pauses. They haven’t said goodnight, but now, with Cecil actually angry at him, Carlos isn’t sure what to say. He can’t stand fights.

“ . . . . I’m sorry. If what I said was inappropriate. I, um--I’ve never actually met anybody who uses a chair instead of an exo before. It’s--it’s different, you know, because chairs don’t have biolinks and--” Carlos bites his tongue. “I should go. I’m just--sorry.”

Cecil sighs and sags into the chair. Carlos sees a dark splotch on his knee that just about has to be a fresh bruise. He traces Cecil’s probable line of drug-impaired travel from sofa to chair and tries not to wince. Cecil is unusually graceful--a somehow endearing contrast with his excited and flustery speech--but no matter how much Cecil wants to protest about not killing himself with clumsiness, Carlos is familiar with the effects of Vicodin, how it can make the simplest tasks into an effort.

“I guess it’s going to be a learning curve for both of us,” Cecil comments. “I don’t know what an exo is.” There’s a pause long enough that Carlos could dive in with an explanation, but he has the feeling suggesting Cecil could walk again wouldn’t go over well right now. “I wouldn’t mind your help if the offer is still open.”

“It is.” Carlos heads for the chair. Then he stops. “Uh--how do I move it?”

“Move what?”

“The chair.”

There’s a long pause. Then Cecil swears, in that same weirdly philosophical tone he used when Carlos walked in a few hours ago.

“I blowtorched the handles off. They kept getting caught on things.”

There’s another long pause, and then Carlos gets to one knee in front of the chair and holds out his arms.

“I guess this is it, then?”

Cecil hesitates, and in his hesitation Carlos sees that other man, the one who left the first time he saw Cecil in pain, and Carlos would cheerfully knock out a few of that man’s teeth. Then he slides out of the seat into Carlos’ arms.

Carlos stands up. Cecil wraps what’s left of his legs around Carlos’ waist, hands on his arms, and Carlos catches his breath. They’ve spent the evening curled up on Cecil’s sofa, yes, but Cecil has so far kept a sort of distance between them--not professionalism, not exactly, but something like it--and certainly there’s never been the chance to stand body to body this way. Even their kisses in first Cecil’s car and then in Carlos’ were exchanged over a midseat console. 

_All right. You’ve acknowledged it, like an adult, and now you’re going to forget about it, also like an adult._

Which would be a lot easier, he thinks, if he could put Cecil down. But no, he has to walk across Cecil’s living room and into his bedroom with Cecil breathing against his neck, occasionally rearranging his stumps for a better seat, once giggling against Carlos’ collarbone in a series of warm stuttered breaths that do strange things to Carlos’ heart.

“You okay?”

“I was just thinking,” Cecil says. “This is really a pain in the ass and you should have carried me the other way. And then I realized, if you carried me the other way--” and his voice dissolves into giggles again--”you’d have to put an arm under my knees, and I’d just go splat--” he throws his arms wide, and Carlos snags him hard around the waist and shoulders before he can fall--”all over the floor.”

“I see the Vicodin is kicking back in nicely.” Carlos wonders if his voice sounded even. He hopes it sounded even. He can feel Cecil’s heartbeat through their shirts.

“I banged my knee on the chair,” Cecil comments. “Didn’t feel it. So it’s probably better if you bring me in because . . . . “ There’s a long pause. “Where’s my chair?”

“I’ll get it in a minute,” Carlos tells him, and the moment is gone. For a minute Carlos is back to where he was when he came racing in Cecil’s front door, and then he remembers Cecil’s comments from a few hours ago: he’s sensitive to Vicodin. Carlos sets him carefully on the double bed and makes a mental note that tomorrow, when Cecil isn’t half out of his mind on painkillers, he needs to apologize and ask a few questions about how Cecil likes to be transported when he’s not the one in the driver’s seat, as it were.

“Where do you keep your nightclothes?”

Cecil waves a hand like he’s brushing away a fly. “Don’t bother. ‘M tired. And _you’re_ in here.” He giggles again. Carlos leans down and kisses his forehead, puts a finger against Cecil’s lips. Cecil is bad at tact even at the best of times; Carlos isn’t going to walk in tomorrow to find him embarrassed at things he said under the influence. 

“You okay if I go get your chair?”

“Mmhmm.” Cecil scoots toward the center of the bed and then starts the long process of wriggling out of his shirt without falling off the bed. Carlos stares at the strip of brown skin under Cecil’s navel just long enough for Cecil to work the shirt over his head, and then he’s suddenly jolted out of his reverie. Cecil needs his chair to get out of bed in the morning. Cecil does not need Carlos drooling over him. Right now, at least, Carlos amends. 

He’s back with the chair in less than a minute--all the time it takes to cross a small living room into a smaller bedroom--but Cecil is already under the covers, closed eyes and bare brown shoulders peeping out under the light knit blanket. Carlos runs a hand through Cecil’s hair and watches those incongruous blue eyes flutter open.

“Where do you put your chair at night?”

Cecil flops a hand vaguely toward the foot of the bed. Carlos hauls the chair down and waits for Cecil to make a sleepy noise of assent before he sets the handbrakes. Cecil smiles.

“Thanks.” He tugs on his coverlet, or at least Carlos assumes he does; it slides up over his shoulders, anyway. “‘m sorry I yelled.”

“It’s fine. I’m sorry for not giving you enough credit.”

“I don’t need it, but you get used to better in a hurry,” Cecil comments, and his eyes flutter closed again. Carlos kisses his fingers and touches them to Cecil’s lips, and flips the lights off quietly before he leaves the room.

He didn’t sign up for this, he thinks, as he locks Cecil’s front door.

Then he can’t figure out how to get the key taped to the mail slot again the way Cecil had it rigged, and so he chuckles and shakes his head and puts it in his pocket to return later.

If Cecil asks for it back, that is.

**Author's Note:**

> Not frightened off yet? You can find these and more than these at prismatic-bell.tumblr.com.


End file.
